Published: June 23, 2008 11:44 am         

Area schools step up AMSTI program efforts

By Melanie Patterson

The North Jefferson News



Teachers at Warrior Elementary School are trying to get back into their classrooms even before maintenance can finish waxing the floors.

That’s because they’re so excited from their recent Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative (AMSTI) training.

Warrior Elementary principal Mike Frugoli is having to reign in their excitement for a week — until the floors are finished — but he expects their excitement to spill over to students when school starts back in August.

Warrior Elementary, North Jefferson Middle and Mortimer Jordan High schools have joined Bryan Elementary to become the first feeder-pattern zone in Jefferson County to have 100-percent participation in AMSTI.

AMSTI is a push backed by the Alabama Board of Education to help teachers more effectively teach math and science. With AMSTI, math and science teachers use hands-on and nontraditional methods of teaching.

A big-picture benefit of AMSTI is that test scores in math and science tend to increase dramatically.

Frugoli said that AMSTI will do for math and science what the Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI) has done for reading.

“With ARI, reading scores increased. Hopefully math and science scores will go up exponentially,” he said. “I think we’re going in the right direction.”

Frugoli credits Debra Campbell, principal of Bryan Elementary, for blazing the path for AMSTI participation in northern Jefferson County.

Bryan was selected as an AMSTI school in 2007, after completing a rigorous application process. The school was also chosen in that year to host the annual two-week AMSTI summer training institute for teachers and administrators.

This year, the 10-day training for this area was held at Shades Valley High School.

“Our teachers seemed to be very excited at the AMSTI training. They were very engaged in what they were doing,” said Mary Beth Blankenship, principal of North Jefferson Middle School.

Dr. Sakema Porterfield, assistant principal at Bryan Elementary, said that all of the schools in the Mortimer Jordan feeder pattern expect great things now that students in grades Kindergarten through twelve will be trained in the AMSTI method.

“For the most part, we are setting the pace for everyone else,” said Porterfield. “Everyone’s eyes are on us to see how our test scores change.”

Bryan will receive its test scores from the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT 10) and the Alabama Reading and Math Test (ARMT) in July. Students took the tests in April.

“Our hearts’ desire is that they can really see some big improvements with the high-school exit exam,” Porterfield said. “What we teach at our level affects the high-school level.”

Blankenship is also excited to see the ripple effects of students growing up in the AMSTI program.

“For us, it’s going to build that foundation from elementary to middle school to high school,” she said. “It’s going to take learning to a different height.”

“With growing the kids in the program, this is all they’re going to know,” said Mortimer Jordan High School’s instructional assistant principal Pat Baughn. “It’s going to create a lot of higher-order thinking and critical thinking, which are the skills that post-secondary education and business tells us kids are weak in.”

She said that one math teacher, Kathy Davis, has already redesigned her classroom to facilitate the AMSTI method.

“It’s amazing how quickly it changes your methodology,” said Baughn. “Math and science are simply not going to look anything like they looked in the past.”

Also at Mortimer Jordan, science department chairman Wendy Graves is looking forward to seeing AMSTI implemented in her classes.

A chemistry and honors anatomy teacher, Graves has participated in Alabama Science in Motion, the high-school component of AMSTI, for 14 years.

“I’ve done it for years. I love it. Nobody had to sell me on the program,” Graves said. “I’m excited about AMSTI because the students I get in those upper-level courses will be more familiar with those materials we will be using.”

With Bryan just completing its second year of the process, the three other schools in the Mortimer Jordan feeder pattern were among 25 new AMSTI schools that were added to the initiative in 2008.

That includes three other schools in north Jefferson County that were selected in 2008: Corner High, Snow Rogers Elementary and Gardendale Elementary schools.